Do you REALLY run settings as "canon"?

[Treebore]

I use published settings all the time. I frequently see people post all the time about how they hate such settings, especially if they have a LOT of "canon" to them, like Faerun does.

I've always been baffled by that. Sure I use a lot of what is considered "canon", but I ignore a lot more. Each setting is what I want it to be, no matter what "canon" is published.

To me, all the novels and supplements, even the stuff in its core box or book, is just "Bard Tales". No one knows what is true until I reveal it to them via game play or campaign notes. Even then, no promises, because I may have been deceiving you this time too.

Its an RPG World with Wish and Alter Reality spells in it, and THATS just what the mortals can do! Nothing is truly set in stone. Nothing.

So that is how I use published settings. Plus they have maps far better than anything I can create. Plus those maps are already laid out with forests, rivers, lakes, oceans, seas, mountains, hills, etc... I don't have to make any such decisions, and if we found out anything was done wrong, I could blame TSR/WOTC, it wasn't my fault.

Plus I found it was much easier to rewrite/edit all the descriptions and histories than it was for me to write them from whole cloth, AND they did so much better of a job than I ever did for my worlds, even my best and most developed world of Cascandia.

So how many of you actually allow "canon" to trap you? To set boundaries around you and what you want to do? Perhaps more importantly, why do you allow it to do so?

How many of you are like me, and it only becomes "canon" if and when you confirm it is in play?

How many of you totally ignore everything and maybe just use the maps, and fill in everything yourself?

 

[MortonStromgal]

Yes and No, if a world has a bunch of books I tend to cherry pick a half dozen of them or less and say these are cannon the rest may or may not come into play.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

When it's problematic, it doesn't come from the DM, normally, but from the players, especially the "I own 200 Forgotten Realms novels and DAMN well want to play in that version of the Realms" players. (It seems like this ought to be an issue with Dragonlance, as well, but I never hear of people complaining about it with Krynn.)

 

[Crazy Jerome]

With canon setting material, I have no compuction whatsoever against folding, spindling, or mutilating. The game is what happens at the table. However, I do have practical difficulties with the material if it grows too unwieldly or spends lots of time on things that aren't important to me.

I don't have a photographic memory, but I do remember written text very well, especially if I read it many times, as I'm likely to do with setting material. (I once got credit on a history test for an answer, because I wrote in the space that I didn't remember the exact fact requested, but that it was on page 237, third paragraph, second sentence, next to the picture of X. The teacher took that as evidence that massive study had occurred--which was true. ) When I write my own supplemental material, as I inevitably do, then this must be integrated into the setting conception in my mind.

Anyway, it takes a lot more mental effort for me to excise things than it does to build on them. At the margins, it isn't much of a problem. But the more things I must excise, then the more difficult the next one becomes. It rapidly reaches the point where I'm better off either just running my own setting or running the published one more or less as is (selectively changing a thing occasionally).

Because of the above, my most successful run of Forgotten Realms was using it with a different game system. This kept the canon as "the D&D version" in my mind, and made it easy to force into the background, compared to the canon that we built in-game for our Fantasy Hero version.

 

[Treebore]

BTW, I was going to attach a poll, but got a phone call while I was creating it, and then found out you have to create a poll within 10 minutes of creating the post.

 

[S'mon]

I don't stick to official canon, no. I certainly don't treat novels as canon for my campaign. I might list canon sources for a campaign, eg "For this Star Wars campaign the original Star Wars movie trilogy are canon" (actually I love the idea of a Star Wars campaign where only the original movie is canon), or "For this Forgotten Realms campaign the 4e Campaign Guide is canon", but realistically I'll still tweak/change things from the source to fit, wherever I think they don't make sense - like the 300-mile-wide 'Underdark' rifts in the FRCG.

 

[Sunseeker]

I create my own settings, if that gives you any indication on how much I dislike canon. I figure, if I'm going to be ignoring canon anyway, then what's the point in running a game that's placed in that canon?

Overall my biggest issue is that I can't legitimately have the player's actions affect the world. I love to have my players be able to dethrone a king, and know that their actions with have repercussions. If I'm in a world where that king has story and stuff built all around him, I and my players know that we've really done nothing. It's like killing bosses in WoW. Each week they're right back there again.

It's much more difficult of course in games like Star Wars where EVERYTHING is canon, but there's still plenty of room for making up your own stuff there.

Honestly it's just more trouble to break canon than it is to simply create my own.

 

[Crothian]

Depends on the setting and what the players want. Some I've run as pure cannon others not so much.

 

[Treebore]

I create my own settings, if that gives you any indication on how much I dislike canon. I figure, if I'm going to be ignoring canon anyway, then what's the point in running a game that's placed in that canon?

Overall my biggest issue is that I can't legitimately have the player's actions affect the world. I love to have my players be able to dethrone a king, and know that their actions with have repercussions. If I'm in a world where that king has story and stuff built all around him, I and my players know that we've really done nothing. It's like killing bosses in WoW. Each week they're right back there again.

It's much more difficult of course in games like Star Wars where EVERYTHING is canon, but there's still plenty of room for making up your own stuff there.

Honestly it's just more trouble to break canon than it is to simply create my own.

Really? My players have broken such major canon a few times over the years. When I used Greyhawk they killed Iuz, permanently. Or at least until someone casts and uses a Wish correctly.

In my Faerun game one group completely dismantled the Zhentarim, killing MAnshoon, Chambryl, and others. They even hunted down Manshoons clones, they think.

A new group with similar, but substantially different goals, has sprung up in my "Faerun", but the Zhentarim are gone, and this new group definitely acts a lot differently, and definitely do not worship the same gods.

So my opinion is, "canon" only controls people only as much as they allow it to.

 

[havard]

My favorite settings are Blackmoor and Mystara. I dont run them as canon though. I guess in broad strokes I keep to whats in the books, but I make a lot of minor changes.

IMO Canon is most useful when talking to other fans online. If people cannot stick to more or less a common basis, I find we have alot less to talk about.

-Havard